The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-10-27
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
New-Fangled Beliefs vs.. The Re-
ligion OF the Bible.
The Only Source Of True Happiness Il
be Found In q Strict Observance Of
Christian Doctrine-Advice
to Young Men.

to Young Men.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage. in a recent
sermon at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, took
for his subject, "a Straight Up-and-Down
Religion" His text was
And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what
seest thous and I said, A plumb line.-Amos
vii, 8.
DIR. Talmage said: The sold masonry of
the world has to me fascination. Walk
about some of the triumphal arches and
the cathedrals, four hundred or six hun
dred years old, and see them stand as
erect as when they were builded, walls of
great height for centuries, not bending q
quarter of an inch in this way or that.
So greatly honored were the masons who
builded these walls that they were free
from taxation and called "free" masons.
The trowel gets most of the credit for
these buildings, and its clear ringing on
stone and brick has sounded across the
ages. But there is another implement of
just as much importance as the trowel,
and my text recognizes 1t. Bricklayers
and stonemasons and carpenters, in the
building of walls, use an instrument made
of a cord, at the end of which lump of
lead is fastened. They drop it over
the side of the wall, and, as
the plummet naturally seeks the center Of
gravity in the earth, the workman dis
covers where the wall recedes and where it
bulges out, and just what Is the perpen-
dicular. Our text represents God as stand
ing on the wall of character, which the
Israelites had built, and in that way
measuring 1t.
And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what
seest thoui and said, A plumb line.
What the world wants is a straight up
and-down religion. Much of the so-called
piety of the day bends this way and that,
to suit the times. It Is horizontal with a
low state of sentiment and morals. We
have all been building wall of character,
and it is glaringly imperfect, and needs
reconstruction. How shall 1t be brought
into the perpendicular? Only by the
divine measurement.
And the Lord said to me- Amos, what seest
thoui and said, A plumb line.
The whole tendency of the times is to
make us act by the standard of what
others do. If they play cards, we play
cards. If they dance, we dance. If they
read certain styles Of books, we read them.
We throw over the wall of our character
the tangled plumb line of other lives, and
reject the infallible test which Amos saw.
The question for me should not be what
you think is right, but what God thinks is
right. This perpetual reference to the be-
havior of others, as though it decided any
thing but human fallibility, is a mistake
as wide as the world. There are ten thou
sand plumb lines in use, but only one is
true and exact, and that is the line of
Gods eternal right. There is mighty
attempt being made to reconstruct and fix
up the Ten Commandments. To many
they seem too rigid. The tower Of Pisa
leans over about thirteen feet from the
perpendicular, and people go thousands of
miles to see its graceful inclination, and
by extra braces and various archi-
tectural contrivances 1t is kept lean
ing from century to century. Why
not have the ten granite blocks of Sinai
set little aslant! Why not heve the pill
lar of truth a leaning tower? Why is
not an ellipse as good as good as square?
Why lis not an oblique as good as
straight up and down? My friends, we
must have a standard: shall it be Gods OF
mans?
The divine plumb line needs to be
thrown over all merchandise. Thousands
of years ago Solomon discovered the ten
dency of buyers to depreciate goods. He
saw a man beating down an article lower
and lower, and saying it was not worth
the price asked, and when he had pur.
chased at the lowest point he told every
body what a sharp bargain he had struck,
and how he had outwitted the merchant.
1t Is naught, It is naught, saith the buyer, but
when he is gone his way, then he boasteth
Proverbs XIX. II.
80 utterly askew Is society in this mat
ter that you seldom find seller asking
the price that he expects to get. He puts
on higher value than he proposes to re.
ceive, knowing that he will have to drop.
And If he wants fifty, he asks seventy.
five. And il he wants two thousand he
asks two thousand five hundred.
Nothing would make times as good, and
the earning Of a livelihood so easy, as the
universal adoption of the law of right.
Suspicion strikes through all bargain max
ing. Men who sell know not whether
they will ever get the money. Purchasers
know not whether the goods shipped will
be according to the sample. And what
with the large number of clerks who are
making false entries and then absconding
to Canada, and the explosion of firms
that fail for millions of dollars, honest
men are at their wits end to make a liv.
ing.
The pressure to do wrong Is all the
stronger from the fact that in our day the
large business houses are swallowing up
the smaller, the whales dining on blue fish
and minnows. The large houses undersell
the small ones because they can afford it.
They can afford to make nothing, OF
actually lose, on some styles of goods, as
sured they can make it up on others. So,
a great dry goods house goes outside of
its regular line and sells books at cost,
and that swamps the booksellers, or, the
dry goods house sells bric-a-brac at the
lowest figure, that swamps the small
dealer in bric-a-brac. And the same thing
goes on in other styles of merchandise,
and the consequence is that all along the
business streets of all our cities there are
merchants Of small capital who are in a
terrific struggle to keep their heads above
water. The Cunarders run down the New
foundland fishing smacks. This is Moth
ing against the man who has his big
store, for every man bias as large store
and as great a business as he can manage.
To feel right under all this pressure re-
quires martyr grace, requires divine sup
port, requires celestial reinforcement.